


Reconnaissance

by 00AwkwardPenguin00



Series: Dragon of the Yuyan [24]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: #Yuyan Raise Zuko, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ba Sing Se is SUPER CREEPY, Gen, One (1) F-Bomb, and Zuko HATES IT, dear G-d what have I done, inspired by @muffinlance's lovely AU concepts, just a little peek into a new AU I'm working on, just in case, s2e14 City of Walls and Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21895918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/00AwkwardPenguin00/pseuds/00AwkwardPenguin00
Summary: ZukohatesBa Sing Se. And the creepy lady that's following them everywhere is being disturbingly obstructionist. The sooner they do what they came here to do, the sooner they can freakingleave. Time to break out some of hisspecialskills.Inspired by MuffinLance's glorious #Yuyan Raises Zuko on Tumblr.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Zuko
Series: Dragon of the Yuyan [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582384
Comments: 345
Kudos: 5533





	Reconnaissance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).



> All credit for this concept goes to Muffin Lance, who took an ask from an anon and freaking _ran_ with it, and very graciously allows all of us to play in her sandbox! This is just a little piece that came to me at work a couple of days ago, but I'm definitely planning on expanding this AU!

Zuko _hates_ Ba Sing Se.

The Lower Ring is crowded, dirty, and stinks worse than a komodo-rhino barn. The buildings are too close, there’s no trees or any kind of greenery anywhere, and being crammed into this ridiculous ostrich-horse carriage with his friends and the bone-chillingly pleasant Joo-Dee is making his skin crawl. The last, at least, is easy enough to remedy.

As soon as the carriage lurches to a stop, Zuko opens the closest door and flips himself up onto the roof of the carriage. He immediately feels slightly better—the carriage would’ve been bad enough by itself, sharing it with five other people had made it unbearable. Settling himself into a comfortable crouch on top of the carriage as it lurches forward again, he smirks as he listens to the commotion his abrupt departure had caused inside the infernal contraption.

Sokka and Toph are openly snickering as the too-perfect lady with the creepy too-wide smile twitters at him. Katara is trying to explain how “special” (read: fucked up) he is, with “helpful” input every so often from Aang. The doll-lady finally gives up, returning to her previous mind-numbing prattle that Zuko immediately tunes out in favor of keeping an eye out for vermin that might attack their stupidly vulnerable conveyance.

He feels someone looking at him, and snaps his head around to catch the looker off guard. But all he sees is a flash of dark green that could possibly have been a shadow. For a moment he thinks of the various quarries he’d hunted with his troop, and finds himself very unsettled at being on the other end of the equation.

They pass through the Middle Ring, which is marginally better smelling though still far too crowded for his taste, and enter the Upper Ring. They pass by a huge gate, and inside Zuko can see a trio of men in dark green robes and wide hats. He shivers when the gazes of all three men land on him at the same time, and he flattens himself down against the carriage roof as fast as he can.

“What’s behind that wall?” Katara asks, like a nerd.

“And who’re the mean-looking guys in robes?” Asks Sokka, which Zuko thinks is a much more pertinent question.

“Inside is the Royal Palace,” Joo-Dee replies. “Those men are agents of the Dai Li, the cultural authority of Ba Sing Se. They are the guardians of all our traditions!”

Zuko shivers again, and taps out _spies_ on the roof of the carriage. Toph snorts.

“No kidding,” she mutters.

The carriage continues through the Upper Ring, and Zuko wants to gag at the oh-so-perfect manicured lawns and gardens surrounding the obnoxiously-sized and gaudily-decorated homes they pass by.

_Not enough trees_ , Zuko taps out, and Toph snorts again.

“What’d he say?” Katara asks, sounding a little irritated. Zuko can’t tell if the irritation is toward Toph for making gross noises, toward him for being weird, or towards Joo-Dee for being a creepy obstruction to their goal of meeting the Earth King.

“Sparky’s just expressing his appreciation of our surroundings,” Toph replies airily.

They finally lurch to a stop in front of a surprisingly small house.

“Here we are! Your new home!” Joo-Dee sings out, and Zuko’s friends disembark from the carriage. Zuko leaps down to land directly beside the creepy doll-lady, trying to make her jump, but she doesn’t react other than to turn that hair-raising grin on him. He scowls at her and stomps off after his friends.

A man runs up to Joo-Dee and hands her a scroll before taking off again.

“More good news!” Joo-Dee trills as she reads the scroll. “Your request for an audience with the Earth King is being processed, and should be put through in about a month! Much more quickly than usual!”

Zuko sees his dismay reflected on the faces of his friends, and Sokka’s voice is despondent when he echoes, “A month?”

“Six to eight weeks, actually,” she amends, and gives them a squinty-eyed grin as though she hadn’t just crushed all their hopes and dreams of getting out of this Koh-cursed city in a reasonable amount of time.

After an afternoon completely wasted by the doll-lady dragging them around and keeping the people they meet from actually answering their questions, they return to the house hungry, tired, and despondent. The little chat about the Dai Li with Pong didn’t help at all, either. Aang curls up on a pillow in the living room with Momo, face and body distressingly blank. Toph stomps off outside and starts aggressively rearranging the garden, while Katara disappears into the depths of the house, presumably to familiarize herself with the kitchen. Sokka drops into a seat at the table, spreading out the scrolls he’d taken from Wan Shi Tong’s library on the lacquered surface and pulling at his wolf-tail in thought. Zuko can already feel the walls starting to close in, so he taps on Sokka’s shoulder, and when the younger warrior looks up at him, he signs, _**Going to do recon. Save me some food?**_

“Yeah, good idea,” Sokka says, nodding with a grim expression on his face. “You’ll probably learn more with your sneaky ninja shit than we did actually following the rules. Just be careful, okay? Stay away from the Dai Li.”

Zuko nods. _**No problem there. Creepy Hat Men.**_

Sokka snickers. “Dare you to call them that to their face.”

Zuko rolls his eyes. _**Save me some food, smartass**_ , he signs, projecting the sarcasm in the angle of of his smirk and his cocked hip. _**I’ll be back in a few hours.**_

“Have fun, Jerkbender,” Sokka says, waving a hand and turning back to his scrolls.

Zuko strips off his quiver and places it beside Sokka, knowing the other warrior will look after it and the bow tucked inside. Then he slips out a window and up onto the roof of the house to get his bearings.

Agni, he hates this city. This area of the Upper Ring is mostly smaller houses set far apart from each other, which is going to make tree-running (or roof-running, in this case) annoyingly difficult. The trees in the gardens surrounding the houses are neither tall enough nor close enough to be of any use either.

But he was not the best stealth expert in Pouhai Stronghold for nothing. The sun is setting, he can feel it and see the reds and golds and lengthening darkness it paints on his surroundings. He can play hide and seek with the shadows until he gets to a more densely forested or built-up area.

He slowly makes his way to the main thoroughfare through the Upper Ring, and hitches a ride on a cart heading for the Lower Ring. He remembers how nervous the pet shop owner had become after Sokka had asked about black markets, the helpless expression he’d shot at Joo-Dee and how pale he’d gotten after her creepy smile had taken on a threatening edge. If he can find that pet shop again and get the owner alone, he’s sure the man would be able to give him some real answers.

As soon as the cart enters the Lower Ring, it turns in the opposite direction he needs to go in, so he snags a passing beam and hauls himself up to the roof. Okay, so the Lower Ring still stinks in a way that makes his nose burn and his eyes water, but at least once he’s up on the rooftops he can actually move. And he can see the sky, navy blue streaked with pinks and oranges from the rapidly fading sunset, which is a vast improvement over being stuck down at street level.

He follows the route that Joo-Dee had taken them, and quickly finds the pet shop. The shop is closed up for the night, but there’s light up in the apartments above. A few peeks in windows, and Zuko finds the shopkeeper in the top floor apartment, feeding a gopher-bear while a a poodle-monkey perches on his shoulder and grooms his hair.

Zuko slips inside the room, and every animal inside (and wow that is a lot of animals, this can’t be legal or sanitary) turns to look at him. The poodle-monkey and goat-dog growl, and the various birds all screech and twitter and make an unholy racket. Zuko sinks down to one knee as a trio of pygmy puma kittens tumble over, and extends a hand for them to sniff. Once they’ve sniffed him all over and determined him safe, he scratches each of the kittens behind the ears and stands up again, ignoring them as they tumble around his boots.

“You’re one of the Avatar’s friends, aren’t you?” The shopkeeper asks, stroking his poodle-monkey.

Zuko nods. _**I’m sorry to barge into your home like this—**_

The shopkeeper holds up a hand to stop him. “I’m sorry, son, but I don’t understand your hand-signals. Don’t suppose you talk like a normal person?”

Zuko clenches his jaw, and the shopkeeper winces.

“Lemme get some paper and a brush set,” he says hurriedly, placing the poodle-monkey on a raised platform before scurrying over to a paper-strewn desk and grabbing the supplies. Zuko sits at the table in the center of the room, and the shopkeeper places the items in front of him and seats himself across the table. The pygmy puma kittens tumble into Zuko’s lap.

“I don’t believe I introduced myself,” the shopkeeper begins. “My name is Ji-Min. And you are?”

Zuko takes up the brush and writes, _My name is Lee. I’m the Avatar’s bodyguard. We’re searching for Aang’s sky bison, who was stolen by sandbenders and traded to merchants, who said they were going to sell him in Ba Sing Se. Where would an exchange like that occur?_

Ji-Min reads and bows his head.

“There is a black market for smuggled animals, but I haven't heard anything about something as large as a sky bison," he says quietly. "The Dai Li keep a very tight rein on everything that happens in the city. It's possible that if the bison was brought to Ba Sing Se, the Dai Li intercepted it before it could be sold."

Zuko doesn't know much about the Dai Li other than what Joo-Dee and Pong have said, but there could be no better bargaining chip against the Avatar than his animal guide. He takes up the brush again.

_Where are the Dai Li headquartered?_

Ji-Min shakes his head. "No one knows," he says. "People taken by the Dai Li just… disappear. Sometimes they come back and it's like their personalities have been changed, flipped like night and day. Sometimes they don't come back at all."

Well that's not insanely creepy. _What would get someone taken by the Dai Li?_

Ji-Min shivers, and glances around the room as though expecting someone to burst in and attack. "Talking about the war is the biggest thing. _There is no war in Ba Sing Se_ ," he whispers, looking like he'd just returned from Koh's Lair.

Zuko knows when an interrogation has reached its end. _Thank you for your assistance_ , he writes, and bows in the Earth style.

Ji-Min bows back, shoulders slumping in relief. Zuko gently removes the pygmy puma kittens from his lap and ghosts back out the window.

So now to find a political dissident on the verge of getting disappeared by the Dai Li. _Shouldn't be too hard_ , Zuko muses as he jogs across rooftops. He had seen on his travels with his friends that some people had trouble letting go of the war even when they were in a place of safety. Most of the time it was just a matter of getting used to changed circumstances--Zuko knew that all too well, after the years of work his troop had put into helping him recover from the abuse from his father and sister, and the trauma of Ozai burning him and leaving him for dead. To this day he still doesn't speak, since speaking out had been what had gotten him into so much trouble in the first place.

But for other people… they never actually left the war. They couldn't let go of the anger and hate they had for their enemy, and saw that enemy everywhere they went.

He continues his jog, but nothing jumps out at him, although he's pretty sure he's picked up at least one tail. Probably time to head back to the house.

Zuko hitches another ride through the gate between the Lower and Middle Rings, then plays hopscotch between vehicles as they head in his direction. It takes forever, and he's ridiculously hungry by the time he slips into their borrowed house through the window.

He nearly lands on top of Sokka, stretched out and snoring on some pillows directly under the window, but manages to avoid him by flipping off of the windowsill. Toph applauds him, managing to make the sound of clapping hands seem sarcastic with the force of her smirk alone.

"Sublimely graceful as always, Sparky," she drawls.

Zuko taps out _bite me_ on the wall, causing Toph to bellow out a laugh, waking Sokka up.

"Oh, hey there, buddy, how'd recon go?" He asks, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

"Did you find Appa?" Aang asks, bounding up to Zuko and grabbing his sleeve.

Zuko gently untangles Aang's hand from his sleeve, giving it a pat before signing, **_I didn't find Appa, but I've got a lead on who might have him._**

"Before we get into this, you need to come eat, Zuko, you missed dinner," Katara declares, holding up a covered dish. "It's stone cold, but I'm sure you can fix that."

_**Thanks,**_ Zuko replies, then takes the dish and warms it in his hands. Lifting the lid, he discovers mutton-pork fried rice, one of his favorite non-camp ration dishes.

Katara hands him a pair of chopsticks, and he eats quickly, knowing that Aang would probably vibrate out of his skin if he took too long. Soon the dish is empty, and he sets the chopsticks aside to free his hands. His friends sit across from him, the better to see him as he signs.

_**I think the Dai Li have Appa**_ , he begins. _**I just don't know where.**_

**Author's Note:**

> To all of my faithful readers of Bow & Sword, I PROMISE I'm still working on it. We all know Vikings have stubbornness issues, but did you know Scots have them too? I didn't.
> 
> Edit 02/24/2020: Changed a minor plot point, but as I develop Zuko's character in this au, I'm discovering that things I wrote before don't really fit anymore. Eagle-eyed rereaders may be able to spot the change!


End file.
